From: djheydt@kithrup.com
In article ,
Brenda wrote:
>On 7/11/2015 8:15 PM, Michelle Bottorff wrote:
>> Daniel S. Goodman wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> My amendment to your advice: If possible, have someone who speaks that
>>> particular version of a language look over your dialog.
>>
>> Nice trick when my book is set in a secondary world.
>>
>> Nobody speaks this language except for the characters in question.
>> Not even me, and I invented it. :)
>>
>>
>> But maybe I can do this when I'm working in my alternate history world.
>>
>> Although my husband seems to be voting for the story set in Ohio, where
>> people will mostly be speaking English (how boring!), to be next one I
>> write in that world, rather than the one set in Germany or the one set
>> in Czechoslovakia.
>>
>> ...Or even, for that matter, the one set in England. (Which I want to
>> be a graphic novel, and for which I already have a rough draft of the
>> script. I tried to convince him we could try kickstarter the cost of an
>> artist for it, but he seemed unconvinced.)
>>
>>
>
>
>My thesis is that you never need resort to distortions of grammar or
>spelling. You can indicate class, foreign-ness, educational level,
>profession, gender orientation even -- all with cadence, word choice,
>and voice. Mark Twain said that in HUCKLEBERRY FINN he had four separate
>dialects of American Southern, each delineated by spelling. I can't do
>that. And it is difficult to read -- if you read it aloud you can hear
>it, however.
And, of course, Twain had lived in the region and was familiar
with those dialects. He didn't have to invent them.
Nobody is asking you to be Tolkien; but (as in all SF/F) it is a
plus if you can be consistent.
--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the gmail edress.
Kithrup's all spammy and hotmail's been hacked.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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